There was a slight catch in the mother’s voice as she said the last words, that made both her daughters look at her anxiously.
“Mamma dear,” whispered Stasy, “do you sometimes wish we hadn’t left it?”
“I can’t say, dear. I did it for the best, and we must be patient still,” she replied.
But when the sisters were alone, Stasy confided to Blanche that she thought “mamma” just a trifle prejudiced and narrow-minded.
“Si on n’a pas ce qu’on aime,” she said in her half-laughing, half-grumbling way, “il faut aimer ce qu’on a. If we can’t have grand friends, much better content ourselves with common ones. We are not put into the world to live alone: anything is better than dullness.”
“I am not so sure of that,” said Blanche.
The next day they went to call at Alderwood.
It was a real spring afternoon, and though the air had still a touch of keenness in it, it was full of the exhilaration which is the essential charm of the childhood of Nature’s year. In spite of some anticipatory shivers, Stasy persuaded her mother and Blanche to have the carriage open, filling it with shawls and rugs, “in case they should be cold,” though as regarded herself, she felt sure that would be impossible.
The first part of the road was familiar to them, as they had to go some considerable part of the way to Blissmore before reaching the cross-country route to Alderwood, which lay on the other side of the town. But once they had turned in the Alderwood direction, a lovely view was before them, and the girls burst into expressions of pleasure; while to their mother, every cottage, every milestone almost, recalled her happy youth.
“I am so glad to find I remember it all so well,” she said. “It makes me feel more at home than I have done yet. Is it not really a charming country? I wish we could have found a house near Alderwood.”